


In The Event Of

by Polly_Lynn



Category: Castle
Genre: Angst, F/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-10
Updated: 2015-04-13
Packaged: 2018-02-20 14:42:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 11,264
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2432519
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Polly_Lynn/pseuds/Polly_Lynn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"He doesn't even register that he's been wondering about something as innocuous as a damned <em>phone</em> until he finds the other—her old one in the drawer of the night stand on her side of the bed."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Post-Montreal (7 x 02), Short WIP, probably 4 chapters or so.

* * *

She has a new phone.

It's nothing in the grand scheme of things. It doesn't make the top one hundred most important things he's missed, even if he did feel the need to tweet about it. The fact that the phone exists at all, not hers specifically.

Except it _is_ about hers. Hers, specifically. Because she has a new one. The latest, and that's so not her. It's him. He's the one who has to get his hands on one the very first day. Except the first day came and went without him.

He has one, too. His old one got crushed. That's what they tell him. What they've _shown_ him, and logically, he understands that it happened.

So he has the latest now. The same as hers, and he's not even really aware it's a thing. He doesn't even register that he's been wondering about something as innocuous as a damned _phone_ until he finds the other—her old one in the drawer of the night stand on her side of the bed.

He's looking for something else. Lotion, because the skin of his hands is still ragged from exposure. She has that shea butter stuff that's better than his, and it smells good. It smells like her, and he misses her every second. He misses her when she even leaves the _room_ , so . . .

_So._

But he finds the phone and forgets everything else. The screen is shattered. He cuts himself. A wicked little shard snags in his fingerprint as he tries to turn it on.

He sits on the edge of the bed, bleeding. That's how she finds him. Calling out ahead from the living room, because she was waiting by the door they were going to do something. A spur-of-the-moment outing, because he's never even heard of anything that's out in theaters and it's something that feels like normal.

He has no idea how long he's been sitting there, but his name dies away as her fingers curl around the doorframe. It dies away, and she doesn't say it again, even though she stands there a long while, wondering what to do. Wondering again how it is that they do this.

"I threw it," she says as she comes to rest beside him on the bed. "The day the FBI pulled up stakes, I think."

He doesn't say anything. She doesn't either. Not for a while, and the blood fills in whorls and grooves. It drips down the white side of the case.

"It broke," she says finally. Obviously, and his body crashes into hers, or maybe it's the other way around and— _thank God_ —they're holding each other. Thank God, however wrong everything else goes, they still fit like this.

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Kate."

He says it over and over, and she tells him she knows. She says that it's ok and they're here now.

It's all she ever says. It feels like all either one of them ever says.

_I'm sorry. It's ok. We're here now._

* * *

He wants to make it work again. The phone. He's sort of obsessed.

"It's not important." She holds up the new one. A demonstration, but he's obsessed.

He smooths clear packing tape across the screen. It's nothing close to the glossy, unbroken expanse it ought to be. It rises and falls and a hundred jagged little things lie in wait, straining just beneath the thin plastic.

"I know, but . . . "

"But . . ." She smiles. She comes around the desk and slides her hands over his shoulders.

He leans back into her. Abandons the shattered phone and crosses his arms to close his fingers around her wrists. He pulls her forward to kiss her temple as she leans into him and it glides by.

"You don't . . . mind?"

She looks at him curiously. Rocks her cheek to the outside of his shoulder to consider him, sideways and half upside down.

"Mind?"

"It's your . . . I'm not trying to snoop."

He feels stupid. Awkward and wide of some boundary neither of them knew was there. She buries her face against his neck, though. She steps right over it and falls right into him.

"I don't mind."

* * *

He works at it in spare moments. Through the night once, but never again. Not after that. The inky silhouette of her in the doorway. The sight of her stark, staring fear. The impact of knees and elbows as they fumbled to hold each other fast.

_You were gone. I woke up. I thought you were gone. That you never came back._

So now, he works at it when he can.

It's a matter of patience. That and straight pins that skitter free of thick, clumsy fingers that still don't feel quite like his.

The _on_ button is smashed, but he can feel just where the contact is. It takes him forever to get the pin in place. He does, though. He taps it just so with his thumbnail and feels it give.

The screen flashes, and for one second—for two— he's surprised to feel tears pricking at the corner of his eyes. Stunning relief, like this means something. Like the damned phone actually matters.

The faint outline of a battery appears. A tiny sliver of red at the far left of it, and below it, the prongs of a plug. A lightning bolt for one second more, and then it all goes black again.

"Something?" She peers around the corner.

He must have said something. He must have shouted out loud, and he could kick himself now. She looks so _hopeful._

"Nothing." The phone slips from his fingers and clatters on to the desk. "It's nothing."

"It doesn't matter," she says when her body meets his, halfway across the room.

"I know." He mumbles it into her hair. "You're right. It doesn't matter."

It's a lie, though he doesn't want it to be. He doesn't know what's wrong with him. He doesn't know why he's fixated on it, but he is. It does.

It matters.

* * *

He lifts tweezers from the morgue. They catch his eye. Some tool he must have seen a hundred times before, and he's supposed to be listening to whatever Lanie is running them through. But he can't think of anything else once he sees them. The way they taper to fine, needle-like points gives him an idea. He pockets them.

Lanie knows. Kate knows. He's pretty sure, anyway. He's pretty sure it's what motivates the hundredth look they've exchanged over his head, but neither of them says anything.

Kate doesn't say anything when he begs off. She doesn't call him on whatever excuse he starts to mumble before the words trail into nothing.

She skips her fingers over his cheek. She slides them through his hair. It's shorter over the ears than she likes, even now. Even though days are moving into weeks, it's shorter than she likes. It's one more thing that makes him want to go. It's one more thing that makes the damned phone matter.

She smiles like she knows, and he supposes she does. Not this. Not _why_ it matters. Neither of them knows that. It's just that she knows what this is about. Tweezers and begging off. He wants to make it work again. She knows that.

She smiles. "See you at home?"

"At home," he echoes.

* * *

It's satisfying. Rooting around the end where it should plug in. Grasping with the tweezers and bringing pressure to bear. Twisting things back into alignment. There's a stupid sense of accomplishment every time he tries to fit the plug again, again, again, and he's a little closer.

He's a little closer, and then it's done. Metal slots into metal and stays. He tugs and the connection holds. It's firm, and he's almost too afraid to try it in the outlet.

He sits there with the cord in his hand, snaking through his fingers. He stares and wonders again why it matters. This, of all things. It does, though. It just does.

He flips the legs of the connector open and slides the prongs into the outlet at the base of the desk lamp with infinite care.

Nothing.

His fingers land on the broken landscape beneath the tape and he can't believe it. _Nothing_.

His forehead drops to the desk. It's gone, all at once. The strange sense of purpose is just _gone,_ and he feels the rest of it pushing in. Anger. Despair. Grief. Absolute loss, and he doesn't know if he'll ever get up from the chair again.

But the wood of the desk vibrates. A long _burrrrrrrrrrrrr_ just beyond his fingertips. The face of the phone lights up. A solid flash refracted and refracted. The battery icon reemerges. The red sliver. It's there a few seconds, and the surface goes dark again, but that's normal.

He brushes at the connector and it's warm to the touch. He hesitates. His finger hovers over the home button and touches down at last. It lights up again. The battery icon.

It's charging.

* * *

He doesn't get up. He doesn't pace or pour himself a drink. He sits, watching.

It's deader than dead. Of course it is. It's amazing that it powered on at all with his straight-pin trick.

He sits with his palms on either side of it. A barricade, like it might try to run, wounded as it is.

He almost jumps out of his skin when it buzzes again. It's the phone actually starting up this time, and he thinks the white-on-black image might spin infinitely. A strange kaleidoscope across the broken glass that makes him hold his breath until he realizes he's dizzy.

He closes his his eyes and pulls in air. He misses it. The moment when it comes to life. Stark numbers telling him that it's later than he thought. The words _Slide to Unlock_ rippling, he thinks, though it could be him. It could be his eyes blurring as he stares down at the wallpaper.

It's a beach house. A searing blue sky over a thatched roof. The warm-looking wood of a slatted deck leading to the hot tub jutting out over the ocean itself.

He laughs. Drags his shaking finger carefully along the bottom and waits for the number pad to pop up. He taps out the code, telling himself it won't work. That surely she wouldn't have left it like that.

This is his doing. The wallpaper. Their honeymoon house in the Maldives. Their wedding date for the lock code.

He tells himself she would have changed it. She must have. But he taps it in anyway.

She hasn't changed it.

* * *

He doesn't hear the door. He doesn't hear her call out or approach. It turns out he hasn't heard his phone or the landline for a while now, and she's frantic.

Her voice is sharp. She strips off her coat and throws down her keys. Everything in her hands clatters to the floor with force as she makes her way through the office.

He hears her now, but the words don't mean anything. He just can't make sense of anything. He holds one hand out to her. The other curves protectively around the phone where it rests on the desk, still tethered to the outlet. He looks from the shattered planes of her face there up to the real thing. The real, beautiful, mercifully _whole_ thing.

"Kate."

Her name is hardly anything. Not even loud enough to hear over the words still rushing out of her, but it stops the torrent. She's silent. Seeing him now. Falling into him. Hissing as her hip bangs hard against the arm of the desk chair, but she can't get close fast enough.

He lets go of the phone at last. He wraps both arms around her.

"Beautiful." It's all he can say for a while. "Beautiful, Kate. You looked so beautiful."

* * *

They drink a lot. Alexis and his mother are out, and he's glad of it. It's for them. This is. One bottle, then another as they spread out on the floor with the laptop and a cable.

The phone keeps dying. The case gets burning hot and something judders and thunks as it clicks off, but he keeps at it. There's something really wrong with the battery, but he keeps coaxing it patiently back to life.

She isn't talking much. He isn't either. He's focused on the task at hand. Obsessed, even though it's just a handful of pictures.

Two red heads and hers in the center. She and Lanie puckering up for the camera. And the first one. Her alone with the sun streaming in the window to gild her hair.

It's a handful of pictures, but he wants them. He _wants_ them.

"The earrings . . ." He leans into her. His nose brushes the rim of her ear. He's a little drunk, and she is, too. They're both trying a little too hard to make it an adventure.

"Martha," she says, and it's a good memory for a second or two. The last good memory. He can tell.

"I remember." It spills out of him. Childish excitement, because he does remember. "One of those old-fashioned boxes with a heavy hinge. I pinched my finger in it a dozen times."

She laughs at that and the goodness of it skips back in. "They're beautiful. It was . . . I didn't expect it."

He swallows past the lump in his throat and tries again. The phone keeps dying before the sync can start.

"Tory . . .?" She says it hesitantly after a while, but the question dies away almost before she forms it.

It's already been _so_ terrible. They've all been trying to move past suspicion and doubt and a locker full of damning evidence. She doesn't want to ask another favor and he doesn't want her to. This is for them, and he's glad she knows as well as he does. He wants the pictures badly, and if it comes to that . . .

"A text."

It seems brilliant when he says it, but he frowns. He worries it's the wine, but she's nodding. She's hanging on his shoulder.

"Yeah. _Yeah_." Her brow is furrowed in concentration. "They . . . it's quick, right? Packets . . ."

He's laughing at her. He's laughing at _them,_ but she's slapping him hard. He knows what she means. He fuzzily knows that it's something about a short, quick burst of data that cell towers hand over when they can. Or something. He'd know if there had been less wine, but there's been a lot of wine.

"Sorry. _Sorry._ _"_ He stifles a last laugh and tries the phone again.

He doesn't let himself look at the picture. Not really. He attaches it and works quickly. Gingerly, though he can still feel a sharp prick at the pad of his thumb. He hits send and fumbles his own phone out of his pocket.

"Castle."

It's an awed whisper through a fierce smile. It comes with her fingernails biting into the skin of his arm. It's what tells him he's not imagining it. The flare of his screen. Sunlight gilding her hair.

He cries in earnest then. Not just tears slipping from the corner of his eye or a lump in his throat. Choking sobs as his fingers travel over the screen.

She takes the phone from his hand. She shoves everything out of the way and brings them as close as she can. She cries with him until they're both exhausted with it. Until long silence comes, and he's the one to break it.

"I have to know."

She tenses before he's finished and he hangs on. He kisses her swollen eyelids and her tearstained cheek.

"Not . . . _what,_ maybe." He smooths her hair back from her face, grateful when she looks up at him, wanting to understand. Wanting to hear him out. "I don't know . . . It's _so_ hard for me to believe that I'd . . ."

"You must've had a reason," she says for the tenth time. The hundredth.

"I must have." He concedes it, finally. Jenkins. Whoever he is . . . given what he knows, there must have been a reason. "So maybe not what. Maybe I don't need to know _what_ happened. But, _how . . .?_ _"_

"The dumpster." She nods. "It was just a few hours . . ."

"And the videos. The key." He buries his face against her shoulder. "I don't understand . . ."

"The timeline," she finishes for him. "Maybe . . . we could put that together. Maybe."

He breathes her in. He's relieved. He's _so_ relieved that she's with him. That her mind meets his on this, and there's a sharp, new kind of pain that comes with it. Realization that they haven't until now. That they haven't been meeting on any point, however hard they're trying.

"They took me," he says, not even knowing that he needs to say it until it's out. Not even knowing that he needs her to hear it until then.

"They took you." She repeats it immediately. With conviction. She tips his chin up so he can see she believes it. She _believes_ it. "That's where it starts."


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I know." His eyes fall closed. He says it to himself, again and again, under his breath. "I miss you while I was gone." She wishes it were confusing the way his tenses slide past each other. She wishes neither of them had to make sense of how that can be, when it just is. It just was

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: I don't know about this. I had the first part of this chapter hanging around for a long while, and I suppose it's about to become obsolete. But I don't know about this. Takes place after Montreal (7 x 02), but doesn't necessarily engage much about season 7 from there on.

 

* * *

 

"I miss you," he says.

She's only just awake. She's only just flopping to her back and blinking up at him. Breathing out the silent thanks that's he's really here. The silent, profound gratitude that's become her first waking thought every day.

He's staring. He's _been_ staring. The dark hollow look tells her, and she knows he hasn't slept.

"I miss you," he says again, and it's an explanation. An apology. A defense. To himself and _of_ himself, because he wants so badly for them to be back to normal, and they're not. She's not, anymore than he is, though he takes the blame on himself in the oddest moments.

"I'm right here." She reaches up to touch his face. Tries to coax the corner of his mouth into a smile. To bring light and scatter shadows. "Right here."

"I know." His eyes fall closed. He says it to himself, again and again, under his breath. "I miss you while I was gone."

She wishes it were confusing the way his tenses slide past each other. She wishes neither of them had to make sense of how that can be, when it just is. It just _was_.

_I missed you terribly. Because there's no way I wouldn't._

* * *

 

 

_There had to have been a reason._

It breaks her heart and wears her down, tugging the other way like this. Going against her own nature and his to find some kind of middle ground. It goes against everything in her. In both of them since so far back. Since Melanie Cavanagh.

_I can't find it._

_You have an ending. You want the rest, you need to work backwards. You need to finish the story._

They have an ending. He's here. He loves her, and there are moments—more and more every day—when that is absolutely enough.

But it's painful, too. _So_ painful not to know, even though she believes it when she tells him. Even though she looks at him with a clear, honest heart and says it, over and over. In the dead of night and in broad daylight when he just can't believe he'd _ever_ have chosen this. Any of this. There had to have been a reason, and if that's what brought him back to her—if that's what makes life possible—she'll fight everything in them both to keep it.

But she'll give him _how_ if she can, and more than that. She'll lay herself at his feet and show him things he needs to see. How it was for her. How hard she tried and her unshakable faith, all those weeks.

She'll steal whatever peace there is for the taking.

* * *

 

They come together. This thread and that. Disparate imperatives meeting at her door. Hers, not theirs, because it's another thing taken from them by those months. _Her_ door. It looms, and she doesn't know if it's good, bad, or indifferent. Bringing him here.

_I miss you while I was gone._

_Not_ what, _maybe, but_ how . . . ?

That starts here. Good, bad, or indifferent.

She fumbles with her keys. She's stalling, she supposes. Or maybe not. She doesn't _know._

She leads him silently through the door. His eyes are wide. Questioning, but he keeps his peace for now. He keeps hold of her fingers. They tighten painfully as they pass through the foyer and into the apartment itself. She winces, moving forward now that she's made up her mind to do this, but it's his wordless sound of distress that really pulls her back around.

She trails after him as he rushes toward the wall. The ruined wall, with its patchwork of unpainted plaster. The baseboard lies pried away in pieces. Toppled, with its angry-looking, snaggle-toothed ends. She sees it all through new eyes. _His_ eyes. She sees the wreck of it, as he reaches up with his free hand and the rough places snag at his fingertips.

"The pipe in the apartment upstairs . . ." He turns to face her. Gives her an odd look. "Your dress . . . the other dress . . . Kate, it's been _months_."

"Months." She nods. Steps closer and shakes her fingers free to trail her thumb along the worried lines fanning out from his eyes. "It's just a wall. It wasn't a priority."

A little laugh slips out at that. A short, pained bark, but he twists back around like he can't tear his attention from it too long. He palms her hip clumsily to keep her near. "But you . . ." He flicks a look down at her. Something cautious and over the shoulder. Guilty, maybe, and she wonders what on earth . . .

"You spent a lot of time here," he says. His tone is neutral. He manages that, but it bothers him. Distress radiates off him. "My mother said you spent a lot of time here. Alone."

And there it is. The thought of her here bothers him. Alone, with he walls crumbling around her and rubble at her feet that _bothers_ him. There's too much in it to unravel now. Anger at what's been taken from them. Always anger, and it frightens them both sometimes. His and hers, but it's far beyond that. That look on his face is complicated and more than just anger. It's sorrow for her sorrow. Worry.

Kate feels that worry eating at the heart of him. Devouring from the inside out.

_I miss you while I was gone._

She remembers something else entirely. McCord, out of the blue, telling her how he'd asked after her. He'd asked how she was doing in DC.

_There he was. Dying—right there in front of us—and he just quietly says to himself "so she'll be ok."_

_He's a good man,_ McCord had said at last. Shaking her head, as if that covered it.

He is. A _good_ man. Kate looks up at him now. Sees the bob of his throat and the way he tries to hold himself still. They way he's trying to make this easier for her.

"I spent a lot of time here."

It's a quiet admission. Confirmation of what he already knows, but he looks like he might break. Like he's afraid _she_ might, because he _worries_ while he was gone, too. Seeing that she's here and whole—knowing that she survived—it isn't enough, any more than knowing he must have missed her.

She shakes her head. She smiles at him. Something steely, though she's half making it up. With her hand on the solidity of his back, she feels the bunched knot of his shoulders drop and inch or two. It's the right smile and she's glad for that, at least.

She tugs him by the hand past the forty-five degree angle of the drooping bookshelves. Past the untidy heaps of hardware and things that might have been salvageable once upon a time. She leads him into the office. She drops his fingers again and throws the shutters wide. The sun pours in, and she thinks of flowers. She thinks of tear stains on her cheeks and her chest loosening from the simple fact of him facing her across the threshold. The simple fact of him by her side.

_You know sometimes I forget you live with this every day._

She watches him sidelong, wondering if he remembers.

He does. He tells her with a wan smile of his own. Just a flick of the corners of his mouth upward before he turns back to it. A sharp inhale as he blinks at himself. At his own name. Picture after picture and headline after headline. He reaches for her, but she's already there.

"A lot of time" She twines her arm around his waist and presses her cheek to his shoulder. "Not alone, though."

* * *

 

There's no one thing that breaks her. No one moment, because they're all terrible. The hard line of his shoulders as he takes in stock images of himself. Years-old paparazzi shots of the two of them. A handful of moments from the last year, captured with a long lens. His face as he reads stale copy. _Missing. Best-selling. Vanished. Cold feet?_ _Missing. Best-selling. Vanished. Cold feet?_ The sound of anguish that bleeds out of him as the ledes measure out her anguish in hours, then days and weeks.

"Two months."

She sees the words on his lips. There's hardly anything to hear, and maybe that's it. Maybe it _is_ that one thing that breaks her.

"I can't," she says, and she knows it's awful. Tugging at him like this. Pulling him away from things he's hardly seen, though she's been living with them all this time. _Two months_. "Right now. I can't any more. Castle."

It's hard for him. It's hard to uncurl his fingers and let the razor-edged clippings fall. "Kate."

It's hard for him to hear the creak of shutters and not to plead, but she's clumsy with it. She stumbles into the ruined wall. Paint and plaster rain down and he has her in his arms. He has his lips on her skin and his words in her ear as they make their desperate way down the hall to the bedroom.

It's dark. The shades are drawn and the air is stagnant. She's hardly been in here at all. She hasn't crawled between the sheets alone or sobbed into his pillow, greedy for the memory his scent calls up. She's hardly been here. He seems to know.

_Kate. My God, Kate._

He strips the clothes from her body. From his own, batting her hands away when she reaches to help. He scatters things far and wide and takes their bodies heavily to the bed. He claws at pillows and blankets and sheets, cursing the cold, crisp lines of untouched linens. Undoing them until everything is chaos.

_Emphatic chaos,_ she thinks in the moment before she loses herself in him.

Emphatic chaos.

* * *

 

 

He has the laptop when she wakes. The room is still dark. Darker, maybe. She doesn't know.

"Not long," he says before she asks. She doesn't know the question, but he reaches for her palm and presses it to the sheets like she can measure the minutes in the warmth.

"Not tired?" She stretches long, her fingers making a slow climb overhead.

"Exhausted." And he is, though he's grinning down at her. Good exhausted. Bad exhausted. He is.

"It's enough for now." She brushes the edge of the laptop screen. She can't see from this angle. She's not sure she wants to. She's not sure she can right now, though she's better for this. She's better for the scent of him in these dark, close confines, and better for the wreck they've made of the bed and nightstand and everything in this place that's gone too long untouched. "It can be."

"I know." He draws his hands back from the keyboard. He folds them, neat and tight at his waist like he needs that. Like it's the only way he can be good.

She doesn't want him to _have_ to be. Not for her. Whether she can do this right now or not, she doesn't want to ask it of him—to be good like that.

"What is it?" She levers herself on to her side and wriggles closer to him. It jostles the laptop. He makes space for her, fumbling and trying to find a way to angle the screen toward both of them. But she plants a stubborn chin on his thigh and looks up at him. "Don't need to see. Tell me." She rocks herself forward so her lips meet his still-bare skin. "Tell me."

"Video. The drop." She hears a click and another click. Play and pause. She doesn't need to see. She knows every shadow. "Hours. It was just a few hours."

The words sound worn out and strange, like he's be saying them over and over while she slept. Like he picked them up where they fell from her own lips, though he couldn't have. It's new. Something for her. Something that was never for the loft. She sees the grainy timestamp in her mind. Frozen.

"Hours," she echoes. She drags her palm down to his knee. She makes herself go slow. "Tell me what it is."

"Damning," he says. He closes the lid with hard-curled fingers like he wants to slam it. Like he wants to throw things. "It's damning."

"It's not, Castle." She shakes her head, shivering as coarse hair tickles her lips. "They took you."

"Or I left." The words are harsh. Too loud with misery. Too loud with all the times he hasn't said them.

"You didn't leave." She's quiet. Her voice is soft with bone-deep calm. Enough for both of them, she hopes. "I know you didn't."

"It's simpler, Kate. Me just leaving." He speaks quickly, tugged two ways. Toward her and quiet certainty. Away from her. Further back than they've been. He's desperate. To push the words out. To have her argue with him. "Occam's Razor. I . . ."

"I know you didn't leave," she says again. "I believe it."

"You know." He tips his head back. She sees the outline of his throat. A painful undulation as he swallows. "You believe?"

"Both."

He slides down the head board. He shoves the laptop. It falls to the floor. A hard thump neither of them cares about as they tangle together.

"Tell me," he whispers.

* * *

 

She does. She works backwards from the smile she could hear in his last _I love you_ , exactly like every one before and nothing like anything else, because they were getting married and he was happy. Through Rogan and Bracken. Through waking up halfway to Canada and the memory of that hard kiss in the middle of the bullpen. The fierceness of it and the way it brought her suddenly awake because her mother is the only other person she's ever known who loves as constantly and absolutely as he does. She leads him through the years and every reason she has to believe.

He's weeping long before she's finished. He's silent and mostly still. The tears run along his skin and gather on the pillow, but his voice is calm when he stops her just before a hot, brilliant morning in a May graveyard.

"You _know,_ too," he says. "You know I didn't leave." He closes his eyes. "Tell me that, too."

She does. She lays it out from memory, though it's nothing they needed to come here for. Heel marks at the accident. The key and Montreal. Using Vinnie Cardano to get rid of the SUV and looking at the surveillance camera dead on. The fact that the _story_ is terrible. She feels his lips turn up against her skin when she gets to that part. All the things he'd usually say coax some kind of smile out of him.

"It's not you," she finishes. "Leaving like that—Alexis and Martha and me—it's just not _you._ "

"What if it wasn't." The words are careful. So careful she wonders how many times before now he's bitten them back and swallowed them down. "What if _I_ wasn't me?"

"Replicant? Cyborg double?" She shouldn't joke. She _shouldn't_ , but she runs her hands down his body like she's checking for bolts and seams and artificial parts.

He laughs, wet and ugly. "Freckle check." He guides her fingers to the swell of his ass.

"You." She sweeps her palm over the spot. Tiny twin spots that somehow look as though they're orbiting one another. "You now. You then."

He nods, but it's not the end of it for him. He's unsettled and it's not some wild flight of fancy. It's something here in this room entirely.

"What if . . . I broke?" It terrifies him. "My mind. What if I just _broke_ and walked away?"

She's silent a long time. The words are there, coiled and sinister between them far too long before she speaks.

"It's not like that," she says. She has a tight hold on herself. She's ruthless, though it's hard. It's still _so_ hard to talk about this. "When I . . ." She laces their fingers together. This is picking up where he stopped her and she wonders if he knows. She wonders if it matters whether he knows or not. "When _I_ broke." She draws their hands to rest over her scar, not even aware she's doing it. "When I was shot, and I left . . ."

"Kate!" He dips his head. He kisses the rough skin. "No. _No,_ I didn't mean . . ."

"Castle, please." She shakes her fingers free. She lifts his chin and looks him in the eye. "Let me finish. This is how I know."

He closes his eyes again. A silent concession.

"It doesn't happen like that. All at once." She feels it again. The unpleasant sensation of the world drifting away from her. Cavernous loss and loneliness. Paralysis. "It's slow and terrible and _ugly_." She thinks of look on her father's face when he left. When she made him leave. "I couldn't . . . Castle I couldn't dial a _phone,_ let alone mastermind . . ."

"I know." He slides his arms around her. "I do, Kate."

"I'm not . . .It's not an excuse and, _God_ , Castle." She swallows. She's burning and self-conscious. "This isn't about me, but I just don't think it happens like that. Not in real life."

"Not in real life," he says back to her, relieved and forgiving, letting go another thread that lingers.

They're quiet again. Drifting in the dark, but together. Half-wrecked by everything, but still standing.

"But I was _there,_ " he says eventually, the wheels of his mind turning like always. He's frustrated now, and it's a strange kind of relief. A pall that lifts as he flips to his back and stares at the ceiling. It's them falling into other lines. Different from how they've been lately. More like they've tried to be since they wept together over a fractured picture of her in her mother's dress.

" _I_ put the money in that dumpster. The video. It's _me._ " He swats at the covers, as if the tangle of fabric is what's keeping him from the answer. "If they took me. Even if Vinnie and leaving my phone and the camera and everything . . . even if I was trying to leave you a trail, why would I . . ."

"To stay alive?" She's frustrated, too. Furious at the way he's blaming himself. "To come _back_ in one piece? Castle, they _took_ you. They watched you long enough to know you had the money. They ran you off the road and dragged you out of a burning car. Whatever you did to survive . . ."

"Not me." His words cut through hers, quiet as they are, and with them she understands something she must have known. They both must have known.

"Us." Her mind is white with panic. With horror. "Martha. Alexis . . ."

"You." He's grim. "All of you."

"Castle, if that's why . . " She struggles, trying to free herself, as if there's something she can do now. As though movement is vital. "If they threatened us. If they're _out_ there . . ."

"They're not. Kate." He kisses her. Stills her and holds her gaze. He's calm now, and that's more unnerving than anything. "They're not out there . . ."

"You don't know . . ." Her eyes widen in sudden possibility. "You don't, do you? You don't . . . Rick. You don't . . ."

"I don't." His face clouds, but still he's calm. He shakes his head. "I'm sorry, I don't remember . . ."

"But you know?" She wishes her voice weren't small. She wishes her heart were as clear and her gaze as steady as his all this time he's listened to her. To how she knows. Why she believes.

"I wouldn't have . . . Nothing else in the world would have made me walk away from you. And I'd do . . . I would have done anything to keep all of you safe."

His voice breaks, a fissure opening as the words settle between them. Implications licking like flames at the edges of this dry-paper tranquility.

_What could I have done that was so bad that I asked them to make me forget?_

"Castle . . ."

She wants to say something sweeping and absolute. That there's nothing so terrible that he cold have done. She wants to tell him that he's a good man, and he is. He _is_.

But she feels Gary Duffin's thumb, bending in her grip. She sees Gary McManus rounding the corner, her shots going wide. She remembers her back to the closing door and Douglas Stevens' screams shattering the air. His fist pounding into Hal Lockwood's face, over and over and over and over.

She knows herself. She knows him and the fierceness of his love. She meets his eyes and it's something like enough for both of them. For now it is.

"I don't know what . . . I'm not sure I _care._ " He shakes his head. "Yet. Ever. I don't know if I'll ever care what I had . . . what I did to keep you safe. But you are." He presses hard against her hip. She realizes she's shaking. She's been shaking. "I wouldn't have come . . . I would have . . . I would've stayed away if . . ."

". . . if we weren't safe." She hates that. She hates that _so_ many ways for both of them. All of them. She hates the very _idea_ of forever without him. She hates everything else this means. "You wouldn't have come home if it weren't over."

"Over." There's longing in it, like he loves the taste of the word and it's left him already. "It has to be. Kate we might . . ." He buries a heavy head against his shoulder.

She slips her fingers into his hair and holds him to her. "We might have to leave this alone."

* * *

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Thanks for reading. I'm sorry for the long delay, and sorry I'm not sure whether this is over or not.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "His mouth twitches into a brief frown. They're working on this. Getting past this new habit of reassurance—I know. Of course. I know. Getting past the sour note that sounds every time either of them voices something that's gone powerfully unsaid almost as long they've known one another—I know you. I trust you. Always."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: I guess this is four chapters with a kind of ending after all. This—or the next chapter, anyway—is the end point I had in mind when I started this back after Montreal aired, but I didn't quite envision this path to it. As with the other pieces, it's set after Montreal (7 x 02), but it's spoiler free other than that and after that, not really engaging with what we've seen on canvas since then.

 

 

"Castle!"

She hears the surprise in her own voice and tries not to wince. He's standing on the other side of the bullpen fence and the uneasy set of his shoulders says it's been a while. That he's been standing there a while, and he might be as surprised to be there as she is to see him.

It _is_ a surprise. Just on the surface of it. She's off today, and this is just a fly by to move some paperwork from point A to point B. Something no one but her could seem to find. On the surface, it's a surprise that he'd try to catch her here. But it's not on-the-surface that's the problem.

It's a surprise because he's kept to the edges at the precinct, first when the calls rushed in and now that the phone hardly rings at all. It's a surprise because they're both prone to flashes of anger at the sidelong glances he gets. They both get. Him like he's a criminal, her like she's a fool.

It's a surprise, because that's not just life at the precinct. It's life on the subway and at the grocery store and every place they try to go. People shouting crazy things and terrible things. People pushing their way between the two of them like it's their right to have their say. It's a surprise because he's not exactly a shut in, but there's a deep breath he takes every time he pushes through the door to the outside world.

It's good. That's what Kate tells herself. It's what the delight rising up tells her, even though there's worry to spare. It's what she decides. It's _good_ that he's here. Unexpected delight, and that has her rushing to him with eager steps, smiling.

"Hey." She presses a kiss to the cheek he offers. "I was coming home."

"I know," he says quickly.

His mouth twitches into a brief frown. They're working on this. Getting past this new habit of reassurance— _I know. Of course. I know._ Getting past the sour note that sounds every time either of them voices something that's gone powerfully unsaid almost as long they've known one another— _I know you. I trust you. Always._

She lets her fingers linger on his shoulder. She lets them brush the corner of that frown and chase it away.

"I know you were." It's a tease this time. He's smiling. Looking a little sly. "I kind of wanted to be . . . out though." His brows draw together, looking inward. His plan, such as it is, ends at the elevator. At the bull pen fence. "Can we walk? It's . . . well, it's _not_ gorgeous . . ."

She turns to follow his gaze through tiny, high-up window at the other end of the room. It was warm enough when she left the loft, but the sky has a sullen, bruised look to it. She remembers the wind. How it made her put her head down and insist on each step and she liked it anyway. She liked something about it.

"Not gorgeous. But kind of . . ." She can't put her finger on it. She shivers with something that's not quite unpleasant.

"Kind of," he nods, like the nothing on her tongue is exactly it. "Can we walk?"

She slips her arm through his and tugs him toward the elevator. She slaps the button and presses herself close to his side. "We can walk."

* * *

 

The streets are crowded. It's New York. They're _always_ crowded. But the two of them are out of step, strolling while others rush by with more than the usual urgency. Grinning, not glowering, when the wind moans so loud they can hardly hear each other and the scent of coming rain fills their mouths. They're out of step with everyone who isn't them, and it's welcome. Intimacy in the crush of everything.

They don't talk much at first. They slow at corners in silent, mutual agreement that they're not going anywhere particular. They're just _going,_ and sometimes he's the one to tug back the other way, sometimes she is.

Her insides flutter. She mistakes it at first for worry. It's unusual. Him coming to collect her when she was on her way home. This leisurely, wandering journey. It's strange, and breaths she hasn't taken yet ripple against her ribs. But he's smiling, or nearly so every time she steals a glance. Their strides are long and easy. Exactly matched, and she takes pleasure in that. Pleasure in how perfectly their fingers twine together and the eerie howl of the wind around them.

It's like courting. She laughs out loud when the word lands at the center of her mind. His head swings toward her. She answers with a stumbling _I'll-tell-you-later_ kiss. He smiles right into it and nods. He gets it.

It's good, she decides again, even though it's far stranger than an unexpected visit. They never got to do this. _Court_ , she thinks again. Laughs again and the look he shoots her is a little darker this time.

They flirted for years. They pushed each other's buttons and walked a line that was too painful, too often. They came together in thunder and lightning, their connection strained not quite to breaking, and there was no time at all to find rest in each other after that first, desperate crash of mouths and bodies and vows.

They loved each other that first year. Of course they did. But they _had_ for so long before that, and they both made too little of the difference. Of the profound ways they'd altered, though life on the surface looked so much the same. They loved each other and nearly got lost in settling for the thing that had been so long in coming that it seemed they _ought_ to settle for something so extraordinary. They ought to settle at least a while.

And he'd asked her to marry him in stubborn anger. She'd said yes in wild relief that he'd follow her a little longer. And again, there wasn't any rest. Fourteen frantic days to tell everyone who mattered. To unwind her life from his when it was the last thing either of them wanted.

They never got to do _this._ They never got to walk side by side and tease secrets from one another, big and small, the way lovers do. They never got to come calling for each other with nothing more than a walk in mind. They never got to _court,_ and this is _good_ in the terrible center of two months lost and the things they don't know. Things they _can't_ know.

They've stopped before she realizes it. They've come to rest, and he's swung around on some street corner to face her. He looks serious. Like he's thinking something over, and he's not sure what she'll say. He's not sure how to ask for whatever it is he wants.

"Yes." She twines her arms around him and kisses his chin. The closest thing she can reach in her flat weekend shoes.

"I haven't asked anything." He gives her a cross little smile. "I was thinking we could go . . ."

"Yes." She cuts him off, jerking his mouth down to hers this time. "We can go. We can go wherever you want."

* * *

 

It's not far. They retrace steps, their wandering to that point having carried them away a little from where've he has in mind, but it's not far. It's not new, either. Not to her and not to them. It's nothing like a regular haunt, close to the precinct as it is. But they listened to jazz on the lawn here once. For about five minutes before she got a call. A year ago. Closer to two.

It's not new and it's not old. She wonders about it in an idle sort of way, as she lets him lead her to an unfamiliar entrance. It takes them all the way around to Avenue B, and she thinks at first he might be stalling. It's an obscure little gate in a low, wrought iron fence, though, and it seems deliberate.

"Secret garden," he says with a wink as he holds out an arm to usher her through, and she thinks then that it's deliberate after all.

"Secret," she agrees. She tips her head back, dizzy with how high above them the thick canopy of green stretches. She pivots on one foot, back toward the gate, half expecting the city to be gone. It's not. Of course it's not, but there's something other worldly about the little grove that makes it feel far from everything. She grins at him. "Spooky."

"A little spooky." He grins back, but there's something nervous in it. He reaches for her hand again and she comes quickly, as anxious to be at his side as he seems to have her there. "Benches this way." He inclines his head down the narrow left fork of a path. "Ok to sit for a while?"

She nods and starts off. She makes it the length of her arm and his, knotted at the fingers, but he's gone still. "Castle?"

"You're not cold?"

The wind kicks up, as if on cue, a dervish of soil and dry leaves circling his body up to the knees. He _is_ stalling now, where she's eager. She's fierce with the good they've found together, even lately. Especially lately. She shakes her head.

"Hungry?"

"Castle."

She takes a step toward him.

"Sneezy? Sleepy?" He stays put, talking quickly. Nervous. Worried. But smiling, too. Delighted, and she feels the giddy rise of her stomach. She takes another step and another until they're toe to toe. "Bashful?"

"Have I _ever —"_ she bumps her hips against his " — _ever_ been bashful?"

"Lots of times." He laughs and reaches for her, fitting their bodies together. " _Lots_ of times. It's amazing."

He murmurs the words into her hair and she believes him. She remembers the moment her scar came to light. The way his eyes swept up her legs the first time he saw her in a sundress. She remembers her own fingers creeping over a movie theater arm rest and his arm landing across her shoulders. She remembers the brilliant flare of Martha's love when she showed off her ring and the warmth in her cheeks when her dad had pulled them both into an awkward hug.

"Happy," she says, her lips pressed to the warm hollow of his throat. "Only dwarf here."

"Dopey?" He squints down at her, trying a little too hard for jolly.

"Happy." She leans against him, letting the weight of her body tell him she's here. That she'll wait with him as long as he needs.

"Happy," he echoes, holding on to the moment a little longer before he steps back.

He keeps her hands in his and studies her, reassuring himself. She flexes her fingers. A gesture of presence. Patience, and he seems to know that. He seems to take it as given, and that's good. It's _good_.

"I want to tell you the story."

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: I'll post the last chapter in the morning. Thanks for reading.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "It's a kind of McGuffin. A dramatic reveal with unmistakable weight, but it's not the center of the thing. With his heart pounding under her cheek and the two of them shivering with something that's not quite unpleasant, she still knows that. She still believes. If it could tell them what happened—if it could tell them how—he would have said, long before now. She knows he would have."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: So this is it. No kind of resolution for what actually happened in those two months, but this is what my Brain wanted to tell about. As with the other pieces, it's set after Montreal (7 x 02), but it's spoiler free other than that and after that, not really engaging with what we've seen on canvas since then.

 

 

He doesn't say anything more. Neither does she. They both know what story he means.

They make their way down the path, their hands locked together and their bodies brushing. It's a little darker as they hit a sharp curve and the space between trees narrows a little further. She tips her head back, but it's the same clouds scudding overhead as it's been all morning. It's not the sun retreating or the canopy bowing under some burden. It's just a little darker.

He sweeps his palm along the wooden slats and comes away with leaves and grit that say it's been a while since anyone but them made their way there. He settles her on the bench first. She holds her hand out to him, reaching up with a smile he drinks in a second. She pulls him down next to her and he nudges close, lifting his arm even as she ducks under it, opening his jacket and shrugging herself inside, as close to skin-to-skin as they can get.

He's shaking a little, or maybe it's her, but it's not frightening. The wind is violent and whipping. The branches sway and groan with it. The sky is more November than August, but they're pressed together and it's not that it's frightening. It's momentous.

It's not the last secret he has. It's not the last he'll keep, because that's not how life is. It's not how either of them would ever want it to be, however terrible things have been when secrets brought the world raining down around them. But he's never told _anyone_ but Henry Jenkins. It's _momentous_ and not at all frightening.

"It was a lot like today," he begins simply. "Strange for February." His lips brush her temple like he knows it was the question she was just about to ask, and it is. Of course it is. "Soggy." She feels him grimace. "There'd been a lot of snow a few weeks before and everything just thawed over night."

"You were at boarding school?" She rolls her head on his shoulder to look up at him. To gauge whether he'll tell the story or they'll do it together.

"Hollander's Woods." He flashes her a grin and maybe it's a little of both. Maybe she'll pick up the thread when he needs her to. "You've been googling, Detective."

"You have, too." She knocks her forehead against his jaw. "We've googled together."

He laughs. He ducks away from the blow, but they _have._ Since the phone. Since the wreck of her apartment, even. They've tread carefully in silent agreement _not_ to go silent. Not completely. But they've paid glancing attention to the story at best. It's curious. She wonders _why now?_

It's a kind of McGuffin. A dramatic reveal with unmistakable weight, but it's not the center of the thing. With his heart pounding under her cheek and the two of them shivering with something that's not quite unpleasant, she still knows that. She still believes.

If it could tell them what happened—if it could tell them _how_ —he would have said, long before now. She knows he would have. But his heart _is_ pounding and they've come to this odd, out-of-the-way place on a day a lot like it. It's important and she wonders how. She wants to find out, and they might do that side by side. He might not know, even now, how it is this matters.

"Is this . . ." she begins slowly, the question in progress before her mind really catches up. "Will the story be . . . familiar?"

"Familiar?" He looks startled. He huddles deeper in his coat and tightens his hold on her.

"A body." She turns her face to his chest, knowing— _knowing_ —she's right, and it's half memory. Things from then that ring true, here and now. "You found a body. A boy you knew."

"You remember." His head falls back and the words are long. Stretched out in his throat. "Of course you'd remember."

"If you tell the truth . . . " She reaches up to tangle her fingers in his hair. To bring his gaze back to hers.

". . . you don't have to remember anything." He's grim as he finishes the quote. Worse than grim as he goes on, plowing through words with a sharp point of anger, old, old, old and present, too. "He wasn't my friend. We never played hide and seek . . ."

He chokes on something. Memory. Terrible memory that bares more of him that's new than she's ever seen all at once. More of him than she's seen in even sullen light like this.

He confesses by night. He comes alive with sweat sealing his skin to hers and breath that's almost too hard to come by. He tells her things, but he loves the dark of his bedroom. Of hers and the office and that huge, stupidly sprawling suite in the Hamptons. He loves the gold of New York always slipping in through the slats of the blinds and firelight dancing over her fingers as he holds them high above their bodies and uses them as props. As actors in his play.

This is more of him than she's ever seen like this. Out and away. Under even this tucked-away hint of sun, and she wonders why.

"You hated him." She's not careful about the words. It's . . . _important_ that she's not careful. That she's simply stating a fact. It's important, though her mind hasn't quite caught up to why.

"He was older." There's a little desperate edge to that. Something that begs understanding and she lays her hand over his heart. She holds it there and feels him calm a little. "He was awful. Awful to me. Awful kids even younger . . . smaller. He was violent and _cruel_." His fingers clench at that, crushing hers. Paradoxical, visceral fury that comes and goes without him really noticing, though he brushes an absent kiss over her knuckles. "I hated him."

"You found his body." He's silent and it snaps in place. The thing he's afraid she'll believe, even for a second. "You _found_ it, Castle. That's all."

"That's _not_ all." His voice is thin, like it's coming to her over a long, long wire, old and frayed. Like it's coming to them both from far away.

It's her first uncertain moment in this. The good in the heart of the terrible. He's suffering. Punishing himself, maybe, by not going on. Making himself live in a moment more terrible than it needs to be, and she doesn't know how to pull him out. She doesn't know what to do for him. She doesn't know what she _can_ do but listen. But wait.

"Tell me," she says, making herself still against him. Settling against him in a for-the-duration kind of way. "Tell me the story."

He does. Not right away, because it's not as easy as all that, but he does.

"He was in a tree. One of the lower branches. They were all black and bony, and he was . . . it was hard to see. His uniforms . . . our uniforms . . . they were dark. Navy and forest green." There's more life in that. More breath and air under the details as he savors different words on his tongue. The writer. This is the story of that, and her heart quickens a little. "It was morning, and there was just this little break in the clouds. Not even a minute. I saw his face first and I couldn't . . . it didn't make sense. It was . . . backwards. And his one arm was just . . . dangling."

"He fell." She pictures it. Slips into work mode without even noticing. She looks up, mentally stripping away the green leaves, rich and dark with life. Making it February. "From higher up."

"They think so." She feels him gaining strength. Finding ease in this familiar routine. "They thought so." That pulls him up short. The past tense. "You were three — " He looks down at her, awed. Appalled. "Two. You were two years old."

"And you were eleven." She smooths her fingers over his chest like she can't quite imagine it. "Just a boy."

"So was he." It comes out gruff. Unforgiving. "Thirteen. He seemed so much older to me then. So much bigger and . . . unstoppable . . ."

_He was_.

That's what she wants to say. That he was a bully. That a gap of two years is enormous at that age, and he should have known better. Someone should have _noticed_. But this isn't about absolution or outrage or anything that she can offer beyond hearing him. Not yet, it isn't. She keeps her peace.

"He was missing. He'd _been_ missing, but we weren't supposed to know. They gave us some story. A family emergency."

Something clouds his face. Confusion. Genuine lack of understanding, and she thinks about the strangely frank relationship he has with his mother. With Alexis. He _doesn't_ understand it at all. The sheltering lie and the kind omission. It's alien to him, and she knows that far better than she'd like. She holds on to him a little tighter. Enough that he looks down at her, questioning. She shakes her head and gestures him on.

"I had it in my head he was living it up in the woods. That I was going to find him and turn him in and get him expelled. Or . . . banished to the Phantom Zone or something." There's a rusty sound in his chest that might be a laugh, but it's gone soon enough. He's grim once again. "I don't even . . . I think I overheard his cronies or something. I must have." He frowns, thinking about it. "I went right to the spot. It wasn't like I was wandering, and if the sky had been brighter . . . but I didn't see him right away. I didn't _know_ that I was seeing him."

"You didn't say anything." It's a statement, not a prompt. Out of her mouth even before she knows it. "You went back and you didn't tell anyone."

"I didn't tell anyone." It's an echo of her words and the farthest thing from them. It comes from somewhere else entirely. Some _one_ else entirely. Someone she thinks he's afraid he still might be. Her heart hurts for him. "My shoes were ruined. I swapped them out and some other kid got in trouble. It seemed important. Not getting in trouble." He looks at her now. He searches her face for something. Judgment or disgust. For something not there. He's emphatic when he says it again. "I didn't tell _anyone._ "

"But . . . you wrote?" she hears herself ask, and it feels sideways. A strange, cautious approach neither of them is much good at. "You wrote about it, didn't you?"

"I wrote." He nods mechanically. "I just slipped into my next class with the bell, and . . . I remember blank page. I remember that composition book. One of those black and white covers. Exactly the same as a dozen others. But I remember _that_ one. The way the binding tape curled up at the bottom and the razor blade cut across my name. And how my hand just started moving over the page. Stupid details first. My shoes and the way the door stuck and I almost panicked getting back into the building." His fingers comb the leg of her jeans. Sense memory. "I remember the teacher. Mr. Ganz. I thought . . . there was just this shadow falling over the page and the pen stopping and I thought . . . I don't know. Prison or something. My mother."

_Worse._ She doesn't quite say it. She mouths it against his neck, and he bows his forehead to hers. It can't quite coax a laugh from either of them. It can't quite, and she didn't really mean it to. A breath. That's all she meant, and it does its work. He goes on.

"He just stood over me, and my hand started again. And he patted me on the shoulder and said, 'Diligence at last, Mr. Rodgers.' Diligence." He looks down at his hand in hers. He turns the knot of their fingers over like he might find ink. "I wrote. I couldn't stop writing."

"How long?" She is prompting this time. It's kinder now. It feels kinder now like this. Call and response to draw out some of the sting.

"Two days." He raises one shoulder. "Not even? They told us the morning after next. All-school assembly. So maybe not even that long." Something more seizes him. Some other memory, just now, and it draws up an ugly sounding laugh. "It was a prank. They didn't tell us that—the headmaster or the teachers—but everyone knew. He had some bag full of stuff that slipped and took him down with it."

Something tells her this is the end of it. Logic, because what more could there be? But the tripping of his heart under her palm, too. That tells her it's the end or nearly, and so does the shift of his body against hers. Restless dissatisfaction with too many things he can't change. No one can change, and he was just a boy.

"Why?" she asks when the silence has gone on long enough. Too long, maybe, though she hopes not.

The answer he gives sounds strange at first. A non sequitur until she realizes what she was asking. The first thing she wants to know, and of course he understands that before she does. Better than she does, because it's a wound she hasn't acknowledged. Something he's never told anyone. Not even her. It's awful that it's here and now, as if _that_ should matter when he hurts like this, but it's the question he answers.

"I saw his mother. I was in trouble for . . . something else. Already in trouble again." He flicks a pained smile down at her. "I could see her through the glass in the headmaster's office. The way she tried to keep her shoulders straight, but she just kept . . . folding in on herself. And she thanked him. In the doorway. She _thanked_ him."

His voice goes thin again. Frayed and far away and worse than the before. Worse because it's flat. A final judgment.

"It gets worse all the time. That part. Knowing that she must have been hoping. I've seen her a hundred times since then. Mothers and fathers. And I think about when they took Alexis." His arms tighten around her. Everything tightens. "When Vulcan Simmons had you . . ." He stops. He sits up, stiff and straight and distant, though he can't quite let go. Thank God, he can't quite let go. "It's not the worst . . . I've . . ." He shakes himself, impatient and unkind. "Not the worst. But it's . . . it is the most . . . wantonly cruel thing I've ever done."

She doesn't say anything. There are a hundred things she _could_ say. That she might if he were anyone else. If she were, she might tell him it made no difference in the end, and it _didn't_. She might say that he didn't break that mother's heart. That it's a story a little boy should never have known, let alone had to carry alone all this time.

There are hundred things she _wants_ to say. Sense and nonsense about all the good he's done. The hundred mothers and fathers and children and lovers who will hold their shoulders straight someday—maybe not soon, but someday—because of the work they do, side by side.

There are a hundred things she _will_ say. That she's made up her mind to say out loud. Not here. Not now, because he's not ready to hear them. Because he knows them already somewhere down deep. That she loved his words back when there was no room in her for anything good. That it's not wrong to make sense of terrible things however life will allow. That it's not wrong that he saw something terrible and, one day, found inspiration from it. It's not _wrong._

But it's not the time for any one of those hundreds of things. She holds him quietly instead. She runs her palms over the shoulders folding inward and keeps silent.

"It doesn't matter," he says finally. He swipes at his face like he expects to find tears, but his eyes are dry. "I don't think it has . . . anything to do with anything. If I did something awful, I don't know what that story has to do. . . unless it's like . . . like Alexis said." His breath hitches at that. The idea of those wide blue eyes being the one to see. "That I _saw_ something and I wanted to forget, so I told . . ." He gulps down air. "I told Henry fucking Jenkins or _whoever_ he is."

"And now you told me." She catches his cheek in the curve of her hand. She brings her own face close to his. Into what little light there is. "Thank you."

"I couldn't stand it." He looks up at the sky. "Just today. All of a sudden I couldn't stand the fact that there was something this . . . this awful stranger who kept me away from you . . . who made you think that I . . ." His eyes drop to hers again, and he's calmer. Like he's suddenly back to center. "I couldn't live one more minute with _him_ knowing something you didn't. But I'm sorry. I don't think it has anything . . ."

"Thank you," she says again. Fiercely. She surges against him and kisses him, sense and nonsense spilling out. "I don't care if it. . . . thank you. I'm sorry . . . Castle, thank you."

Thunder cracks the sky. Sudden and just like that, the world is solid a sheet of light. He laughs, into her mouth. He swipes at her cheeks and his own, finding rain this time.

"Let's go home, Kate."

He tugs her from the bench, running already. Holding on to her hand. Guiding them with sure feet to the sharp bend where the path widens and the world gets lighter, traveling this way.

.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Thanks for reading


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